Late of This Parish (11 page)

‘No. Should I?' The denial was too quick, too unthinking. Mrs Oliver put in quickly, ‘There's your cousin Sarah.'

‘Who lives in deepest Cumbria. And who with any luck might one day fall into Lake Windermere and never be seen again.'

‘Seb! That's an appalling thing to say.'

‘She's an appalling girl, Ma. The last time I saw her she was fat and spotty and pulled wings off flies.' His eyes were wickedly alive again.

‘What nonsense, Sebastian!' said the Rector severely. ‘I find exaggerations like that not only uncalled for and unamusing, but in the worst possible taste.'

‘Who says I'm exaggerating?'

It was time to leave. Sebastian Oliver had talked a lot of foolishness, making it hard to sort the wheat from the chaff. Most of it was showing off, of course, but it also suggested to Mayo that there was much more tension in him than was apparent on the surface. He thought he might even, in certain circumstances, be a very dangerous and rather cunning young man. That allusion to the method of Willard's death might have been indicative of innocence or might be a bit of would-be clever wool-pulling. Although Mayo was far from convinced that they had got from him all that he knew or thought – it seemed to him that there had been an uncalled for urgency in Sebastian so precipitately rushing off to see Willard as soon as he arrived home, for instance – Mayo was realistic enough to know when he had for the time being lost a witness. At the moment it didn't matter. He could come back to Sebastian.

Contrary to what Miriam Thorne had told Mayo, Laura hadn't taken the pills given her by the doctor, even though she knew she wouldn't sleep without them. She had wanted to keep awake. She had to think what to do, what to say, not to make any mistakes, and sleeping pills made you feel like a zombie. So she was horrified to find she'd slept after all, feeling as though there were something callous and uncaring about being able to, even though it had only been for an hour or two and she knew it was the sleep of emotional as well as physical exhaustion.

She lay in the unfamiliar bed in Miriam's guest room, wearing one of her hostess's nightdresses, a voluminous affair in pink stretch satin, Philly having declared that she hadn't one to lend, nor pyjamas, never having worn either since she was fifteen. Laura couldn't have faced going back to that empty house to fetch her own things.

The sudden glimpse in the wardrobe mirror of the suit she'd taken such care in choosing nearly reduced her to tears again. Now flung anyhow over the back of a chair, the gleam of its rich silk brought back the horror of what had happened. A deep depression washed over her, she lay in such a misery of guilt and fear and horror that she almost cried out. If only one could put the clock back – if David could have been here – if she could beg her father's forgiveness! If only. All memory of the intolerable strain of the last years had gone, leaving only what had been good between herself and her father.

‘You didn't know him before his illness,' she'd once tried to explain to David, who thought the stroke no excuse for her father's impossible and sometimes downright unchristian behaviour.

‘No.'

The ironic monosyllable had been uncompromising and she'd found she couldn't continue in the face of his apparent unwillingness to try and understand: how much her father had hated the trappings of ill health, his impatience over the necessary preoccupations with the functions of his hitherto taken for granted body, the unacknowledged fear that he might have another, even more incapacitating stroke which would disable him mentally as well as physically.

Laura had feared this as much as her father did. The last one, leaving him as if not only partially paralysed but chronically short-tempered and resentful, had damaged their relationship little by little, much as she had striven for patience. Not that it had ever been a demonstrative relationship, he had always been too dry and detached for that, but there had been respect and affection. His wit, though caustic at times, had made him a sharp and amusing companion and though disappointed in her lack of scholarship, his encouragement to her to read widely had lit a candle in her mind, illuminating corners that might have remained dark and unexplored. She would never cease to be grateful for it.

These were the things she must remember about him, that she must cling to.

From downstairs came the unmistakable jerky ring of the old-fashioned doorbell that Miriam had installed because it was old and ‘in keeping', never mind that you could sprain a wrist in the process of twisting it to make it work. Taff's barking and a man's deep voice, not Denzil's, sounded from below. Just for a moment she thought it was David and her heart somersaulted and then she remembered that he was in Brighton and wouldn't be back until late tomorrow. It must be the police again.

She knew she ought to go downstairs and get it over with. No! Instinctively, like a child, she drew the duvet up and buried her head.

It was Mayo's voice that Laura had heard.

As the Rectory door shut behind them, he had noticed that the mobile unit had now arrived and been parked across the square in front of a timbered house that was used as the parish rooms. But there was a crack of light between the curtains in the Thornes' house and he decided it wasn't too late to return Laura Willard's key. Leaving Kite to go across the square, he rang the Thornes' bell.

A salvo of sharp, terrier-like barks came from the back of the house. The door was opened by a scantily-clad young woman who would have been extremely pretty if she hadn't been hiding behind a witch-like make-up, with her dark hair cut very short and spiked like a sea-urchin. She accepted the key with a minimum of thanks and was just about to shut the door when her mother leaned over the half-wall which was all that separated the sitting-room from the tiny hallway, popping up like some outsize ginger-haired Judy, glass in hand.

‘Who is it, Philly? Oh, it's you, Chief Inspector.'

‘I came to drop Miss Willard's key in, but since you haven't yet gone to bed, would it be inconvenient to give me a few minutes of your time?'

‘I was just on my way but – oh, all right. Come in.' And to her daughter, ‘Bring us some coffee, darling, will you?'

‘Not for me, Mrs Thorne, thanks.'

‘No? Then not for me, either, Philly. Not such a good idea, perhaps, this time of night. How about a drink instead? No? Oh well, I'll finish mine if it's all the same to you.'

She was wearing a pink towelling bathrobe and slippers which backed up her assertion that she'd been preparing for bed and he assured her again that he wouldn't keep her long. ‘Oh, it doesn't matter.' She came round from the back of the screen, still holding what remained of her drink, and opened a door off the hall. ‘My husband's study,' she explained. ‘He won't be in until very late tonight.'

Watched with what he sensed was silent hostility from the girl Philly, he followed Mrs Thorne towards a small room on the other side of the staircase, where the windows were of old lattice curtained in a cheerful chintz and the low beams black with age. Before stepping inside he looked around for the daughter but she'd disappeared.

The room was so small there was no room in it for anything else other than a set of bookshelves wedged between two of the upright beams, an oak desk and chair and a small chintz-covered easy chair close to the fireplace. It struck him as perverse for a woman of Mrs Thorne's size to choose a house of such miniature proportions, emphasizing the ludicrous contrast with her own, though on reflection he doubted whether that would bother Miriam Thorne overmuch, or even enter her head. She had a humorous face, indicative of good sense but not much imagination. He saw that the preoccupied air she'd worn earlier had been replaced by a purposeful look. She'd made up her mind what she was going to tell him. He pulled out the upright chair before the desk when she asked him to be seated and after kneeling to switch on the electric fire and heaving herself to her feet she subsided into the armchair, watching him with a slightly wary expression.

‘I suppose you want to know what I was doing at the time of the murder?' she asked with a wryly lifted eyebrow.

‘It's the question we shall be asking everyone, so it'll do to begin with.'

‘Well, that's easy. I was here with my feet up and a drink in my hand, if it happened at six-fifteen as Lionel says it did. I teach languages at Uplands House, you know, and we've had an open day today. I stayed on to help with the clearing up in the kitchen. That sort of thing doesn't normally form part of my duties, you understand, but we're very short-staffed at the moment and Richard – Richard Holden, the Headmaster – asked me if I'd help out. I said I didn't mind, all hands to the pump, you know. I was there until ten to six.'

‘How long did it take you to get home? Ten minutes?'

‘A bit longer than that. I cycled home, no use for a car here.' The vision of Miriam Thorne on a bicycle was too much to dwell on and keep a straight face; he concentrated on getting the facts down. ‘As soon as I got home, I had a very dry martini,' she went on. ‘And did I need it after four undiluted hours with parents!' Her smile faded and she added soberly, ‘God, how awful to think he was being killed while I was here, knocking it back ... He
was
killed, wasn't he? It wasn't another stroke?'

‘We can't know for certain yet,' he replied cautiously, ‘but yes, it does look that way.'

‘Poor soul. He didn't deserve that, even though he was –' She broke off and finished her drink at one gulp. ‘I'm talking too much, probably too many of these,' she said, putting the empty glass down on the floor beside her.

He didn't think she was over the top, just a little loosened up, though the martini probably wasn't her first, or even her second.

‘He was what, Mrs Thorne?'

‘He was a very dominating man, Laura's father. She should've broken loose, years ago, but Laura's like that, she's too soft. He was making her life a misery – using the fact that he was an invalid as emotional blackmail, being obstructive about her marrying a man who's been divorced – even though it's a wonderful chance for her. David may even be the next Headmaster, there's a fifty-fifty chance, though he wouldn't have been if old Willard had had anything to say about it. But with all his faults Laura loved the old devil. I mean, she was deeply attached to him.'

‘Did you see anybody or anything unusual as you came in?'

‘Nothing at all. Not a soul, in fact, except Laura coming home in the taxi. Spoke to no one until the Rector brought her here and told me what had happened. Poor darling, her stars can't have been very auspicious today, what with this, and the accident and all.'

‘What accident?' he asked sharply.

She darted him a swift, sidelong glance. ‘Oh yes, of course, you wouldn't know. She'd been in Lavenstock all day and on the way home she bumped the car. She'd called in at a filling station for petrol and coming out she pulled out into the traffic too soon ... Another car caught her wing and spun her across to the other side of the road.'

‘Where was this?'

When she gave him the name of the filling station, which was just on the outskirts of Lavenstock, one familiar to him, situated on a stretch of fast dual carriageway, he thought Laura Willard had been very lucky indeed to escape without a serious accident.

‘She was very shaken up,' Mrs Thorne agreed. ‘Someone might easily have been hurt – even killed I suppose. She blames herself, says it was all her fault but I suppose she'd have her mind on other things.'

‘What other things?'

‘Oh, nothing special,' she said vaguely. ‘I dare say she's right, really. I have to say she's not a very good driver.'

‘What time did it happen?'

‘Late this afternoon, I gather. Apparently it's made a mess of both cars and, as you must know, anything like that takes ages to sort out so she had to get a taxi home because the steering on hers was a bit suspect. That's why she was so much later home than she intended.'

He knew why she was telling him all this. If true – and only a fool would have used such an easily verifiable story as an alibi if it were false – then Laura Willard was likely to be in the clear as far as killing her father was concerned. The timing was too tight, for it was surely stretching credibility to bizarre lengths to believe that she would immediately have rushed headlong to the church after such a grim couple of hours to find her father, and then for some reason have done away with him. Even after a sudden flare-up between them about, say, her damaging the car. All things, however, were possible.

He stood up, and thanked Mrs Thorne, apologizing for keeping her from her bed. ‘That's all right. They go to bed early in Wyvering and I've adopted the same habit.'

‘Have you lived here long?'

‘Twelve years. Since my husband's job brought him to these parts.'

‘He's Director of the Fricker Institute, I'm told.'

‘My, you have been doing your homework! The Fricker, yes. Where they experiment on animals, not to test cosmetics, but in order to alleviate human suffering. And in case you think otherwise, I wholeheartedly support that.'

‘Why not? I'd have thought it a very worthwhile job.'

‘Not everyone thinks so. He only just escaped that bomb last month.'

‘He was a lucky man, then. I wasn't concerned in the investigation – Hurstfield's not in my bailiwick – but I heard about it,' he told her, and then had to listen while she told him in a forthright and not very complimentary manner what she thought of the police attempts to find the bombers and her opinion of the bombers themselves –'

She stopped abruptly and apologized. ‘I'm sorry. I get rather carried away.'

‘That's understandable. I suppose it must always be a fear at the back of your mind, but your husband must be used to it, getting threats and so on?'